This is way overdue. It may be the worst of times, but someone out there needs to pound the mean streets of Deutschland in search of those elusive yet cushy numbers for eslcafe chums. That someone, meine Damen und Herren, is here - me and my good friend Herr Keingeld, a teacher from Langeweile in the former East Germany. Every week, until we get paid that is, we'll be posting the crème de la Milch of German TEFL.

With no further ado, let’s do it. An up and coming school in Halle-Leipzig-Bitterfeld, that’s near the Polish border I think, has these words:

Quote:

9 month freelance contract. Starting November 1, 2005. Teaching adults general and business English daytime and or evenings. Interesting and varied job. Would suit young, enthusiastic teacher who is looking to gain experience.

Pay 11.50€ per lesson hour + 900€ bonus on successful completion of contract. Working between 25-40 lesson hours per week.
Shared accommodation available at 250€ per month.

Small friendly school run by English and American teachers.
situated in the old East Germany. The school is run by English and American English teachers.
We mainly teach business English to adults.
We use teaching material from Cambridge and Oxford Press.
The main advantage for working with us is that we are teachers ourselves and understand what our students and teachers need.

Let’s recap, or rather translate Herr Keingeld:

The 25 hours would land you £846 a month before tax – don’t even ask about the tax for freelancers. No one knows, not even Herr Keingeld. Burnout candidates “teaching” 40 hours would get £1352. Enjoy while it lasts.

9 month freelance contract – World Cup 2006 approaches. Be afraid. Be very afraid. See you at summer school in Worthing, kids.

That job sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Fact is most schools in Germany pay horrible rates and the "freelance contract" is an oxymoron -- no such thing. One is either with a contract which includes benefits normally accorded to German workers or one is freelance -- not both.

Interesting advert by another school in Germany requiring a Master's in TESOL, specialised banking knowledge, 3 years of documented business English teaching experience, required to develop lesson plans and much, much more (very LONG list of requirements) for 24,000 (before tax) euro per year.

Sounds like the DOS is foisting off his own duties for that princely sum. Wonder what he makes to swish around doing nothing? Topping it off, they want a lesson plan submitted with application -- collecting them, are they?

Anyone aware that there is now a proposal to raise the MwSt in Germany from 16% to 20%? Your measly teaching salary will buy even less in future. Great way to go by the German government to encourage economic growth!

as a freelancer, you should be charging VAT anyways. Therefore remotely related to your business (all books, DVDS, computer parts, carefully written up restaurant visits, trips home, etc etc) can be put against VAT. So it really shouldn't make soooo much difference to you.

Man, German ESL jobs stink. You could make more with no experience in Asia. Also how come a poor country like Vietnam pay their ESL teachers about as much as Germany. I have seen jobs in Vietnam that pay $1000 a month plus free housing as opposed to 1300 Euros in Germany. I think your 1000 US in Vietnam will give you a lot better life that 1300 Euros in Germany.

Oops, Herr Keingeld had one of his turns and took advantage of a German welfare scheme by spending the last four months (free of charge) in Pattaya, which is somewhere in Thailand so we're told. Apparently, Herr Keingeld's started a language school in Pattaya called Midnite, which is a daft name for a school if you ask me, but hey the German taxpayer is always right, aren’t they Mr Keingeld?
But no worries, he’s now back for a day and a half with a handful of cushy ones (one select position) for teachers in his homeland.

Quote:

******* has vacancies for business English trainers in our centres in Duesseldorf and Krefeld, from the second half of February 2006.
Candidates should:
- be native speakers
- hold a minimum of a Bachelorës degree
- hold a recognised TEFL qualification - e.g. Cambridge CELTA
- have some teaching experience and experience working in a business
environment
- be prepared to buy a car on arrival in Germany
Please send your CV, a covering letter and a photograph to:

So, that will be one air ticket, three month’s “Kaution” on your apartment, a car and car insurance, please. Never fear, pay day will always be a month away.

Herr Keingeld can’t even drive (until 2008), but he mentions something about car leasing schemes whereby a group of individuals (a school for example) can lease and share a small car for a pittance. But, hey, let’s watch clueless Johnny-come-lately blow 10,000 Euro on some rusty bag of wotsit instead.

There’s no mention of compensation. Herr Keingeld has two theories:

i) A busy school owner too busy concentrating on curricula, etc, to comprehensively vet the vast number applying for such a life-changer. The French Foreign Legion also use such techniques.

ii) 13 Euros an hour.

The best till last; the icing on der Kuchen: The job’s in Dusseldorf, which as we all know is the cheapest place in Germany, and Krefeld which no-one’s ever heard of so it’ll be, well, even cheaper.

You can laugh, but this particular advert from inlingua crosses new boundaries of crapness.

I can't stress enough the low costs of car-sharing schemes in Germany. I once worked at a place in Frankfurt that leased a car this way.

Can you imagine.... the horror.

Pay for some car and insurance. Arrange a parking space. Oh, and then...
- Drive to lessons.
- Pick up three other teachers teaching at same company that day
- Drive to late (as in tardy, not dead) American colleague's apartment on way to class.
- Wait for ages after your class for that same American who never shuts up and overruns by hours every bloody class.
- Go to Wal-Mart on the way back so that very same Amercan can stock up on her Hershey bars. Listen to her incessant whinging about your driving on the way home (personal experience of that one).
- Spend an eternity parking your car whilst every other teacher has long since got out, had lunch and gone home.
- Clean up Hershey wrappers.
- Spend your entire salary on parking tickets because your school has no car parking within a 6Km radius.
- Oh Herr Dummkopffahrer, would you mind dropping off these books at XYZ GmbH ths afternoon? Yes, they have a car park - in Munich.

It's a long time since I looked on the forum - went away because someone flamed and I didn't have time to deal with it properly - have learnt how to do this now, but have even less time these days!

Anyway, I was checking out the eures website in German (http://europa.eu.int/eures) with first "English" and then "Englisch" as a searchword and thought I'd go to the ESL Café and see if people are still moaning about pay and everything else in Germany - they are!

I don't know how the language schools operate that are being quoted on the forum. There may be a lot of difference between Eastern Germany and Western Germany. Should just like to endorse that there are probably worse plyaces than either... and the postings on the forum sometimes have a delicate aroma of sour grapes.

If you go to the "Working in Germany" page of this forum you'll find a screed I once wrote. It's too much to hope that a TEFL teacher who is a speaker of British English would be reading this and prepared to trust me as a conscientious employer, I imagine - but here's hoping!

Hello Susan, as this thread is critical of the types of badly paid TEFL jobs in Germany maybe you could tell us about the job offer on here (along with the all important pay of course) so we can comment on it.